On Viol and Flute :: :: University of Virginia Library

Far out to east one streak of golden light
Shows where the lines of sea and heaven unite,—
White heaven shot through with film of flying cloud,
Grey sea the wind just flutters and makes bright,
And wakes to music neither low nor loud.

Two horns jut out, and join, and rim the bay,
Save where a snow-white strip of shingle may
Break through the bar, where, black as black can be,
Their steep and hollow rocks resound all day
The jarred susurrus of the tumbling sea.

Here on a sunny shelf, while hot the air
Flooded our limbs and faces, brown and bare,
We lounged and shouted, plashing with slow feet
The warm and tidal pools that wasted there,
And down below us saw the sea-foam beat.

Then, leaping down together with a cry,
I watched them dash into the waves, and fly
Around the shallows as a sea-bird bends,
Tossing the froth and streaming, and then I
Plunged like Arion to my dolphin-friends.

The cool impassive water clung and pressed
Around our buoyant bodies, head and breast;
Downward I sank through green and liquid gloom,
By all the streams of shoreward seas caressed,
Dark vitreous depths by faint cross-lights illumed.

And rising once again to sunlit air
We flung the salt-drip back from beard and hair,
And shouted to the sun, and knew no more
The trodden earth, with all its pain and care,
But set our faces sea-ward from the shore.

Then, lo! the narrow streak of eastern light
Along the dark sea's line, began to smite
Its radiance up the heaven; the flying mist
Sped from the sky, and left it gold and white,
And made the tossing sea like amethyst.

Midway between the rocks that girt the bay,
An islet rose, of rock as black as they;
Sombre it stood against the glowing sky
And two of us swam out to it straightway,
And cleft the waves with strenuous arm and thigh.

And as I strove and wrestled in the race,
I turned and saw my comrade's merry face;
The sunlight fell upon his hair, and through
The film of water showed the sinewy grace
Of white limbs, bright against the sea's green-blue.

So, laughingly, we won the rock, and then
Climbed up and waited for our fellow-men;
Sat on the eastward brink of it, and let
The cold foam cling upon our feet again,
And plash our limbs with tangle crushed and wet.

There, holding back the wet hair from my eyes,
The moment seized me with its strange surprise;
Straightway I lost all sense of present things,
And, in the spirit, as an eagle flies,
I floated to the sunrise on wide wings.

Some antique frenzy sliding through my brain
Made natural thought a moon upon the wane,
Fast fading in a vague and silvery sky;—
I know not if such moments be not gain;
They teach us surely what it is to die.

But suddenly my comrade spoke; the sound
Recalled my soul again to common ground;
And now, like sea-gods on a holiday,
My friends were tumbling in the foam around,
And made the waters hoary with their play.

With that, I spread my naked arms, and drew
My hands together o'er my head, and knew
That all was changing into cool repose,
And while into the pulsing deep I flew
My glad heart sang its greeting; ah! who knows

What power the sea may have to understand,
Since all night long it whispers to the land,
And moans along the shallows, and cries out
Where skerries in the lonely channels stand,
And sounds in drowning ears a mighty shout?

“Sea that I love, with arms extended wide,
I clasp you as the bridegroom clasps the bride;
Strong sea, receive me throbbing; close me round
With tender firm embracings! Not denied,
I plunge and revel in thy cool profound!

“There are who fear thee; what have I to fear?
Lover, whose frowns and very wrath are dear!
Shake out the odours of the windy waves,
Sound thy dim music that my ears may hear;
I shall not tremble though thy channels rave!

“Have I not known thee? Lo! thy breath was mild
About my body when I was a child;
My hair was blanched with sea-winds full of brine;
No voice beguiled me as thy voice beguiled;
The loveliest face my childhood knew was thine!

“Then on the shore in shadow; but to-day
I plunge far out into the sun-lit spray;
A child's heart gave thee all a child's heart can,
But now I love thee in a bolder way,
And take the fiercer pastime of a man.

“Nor I alone enjoy thee! Here a score,
Comrades of mine and still a million more
Might leap to thee; thou would'st rejoice again,
Like her of old whose mystic body bore
As many breasts as there are mouths of men!

“Clinging, thy cool spray makes us thine alone;
We have no human passion of our own;
Here all is thine, prone body and dumb soul;
Thine for thy waves to dash, thy foam to crown,
Thy circling eddies to caress and roll!”

With that I shot along the glittering sea,
Parting the foam, and plunging full of glee,
Tossed back my tangled hair, and struck far out
Where orient sunrise paved a path for me,
And whispering waves returned my lyric shout.

Behind me and around me, lithe and fair,
Like Triton-kings at sport my comrades were,—
Some tossing conchs that they had dived to find,
Some spreading ruddy limbs and sunshot hair
To woo the soft cool kisses of the wind.

It seemed the sea had heard my hymn of praise,
And laughed beneath the torrid sky ablaze;
The pure green water lapped us, warm and red;
The sweet life throbbed in us in wondrous ways;
We let the sunlight stream on hands and head.

Ah! for the sky put off its robe of gold;
A sharp wind blew out of a cloudy fold;
The bitter sea but mocked us! To the core
The keen breeze pierced us with a cutting cold,
And sad and numb we huddled to the shore.

So pass life's ectasies, and yet, ah me!
What sorrow if no change should ever be,
Since, out of grieving at a present blight,
Come sweeter wafts of garnered memory,
And sweeter yearning for a new delight.

And but for that chill end in rain and wind,
I know not if my changing brain would find
On its palìmpsest memories of that day,
When full of life and youth and careless mind
We dashed and shouted in the sunlit bay.